NEW YORK ? NASA's latest big-ticket space observatory ? the James
Webb Space Telescope ? took center stage alongside space and science luminaries
on Tuesday here at the World Science Festival.

The festival's opening ceremonies were held at Battery Park,
where a giant life-sized model of the observatory will be displayed all week
for the public to see.

"It's exciting and humbling to stand next to this model
of the James
Webb Space Telescope," said famed physicist Brian Greene, co-founder
of the World Science Festival.

Greene spoke to an audience of about 150 New York public
school students who came to view the model and learn about the future of U.S. space
exploration.

The World Science Festival will include science-themed
lectures and events throughout the city from June 2 through June 6. A gala
performance on Wednesday featuring Alan Alda, John Lithgow, Yo-Yo Ma and other
celebrities will honor physicist Stephen Hawking.

Next generation space telescope

The $5 billion James Webb observatory, envisioned as the successor
to the Hubble
Space Telescope, will launch in 2014 to scan the skies in infrared light.
Scientists hope it will reveal some of the youngest galaxies in the farthest
reaches of space, helping to solve some fundamental cosmic mysteries such as
how the universe formed.

The mockup, built by prime contractor Northrop Grumman
Aerospace Systems, stands 40 feet (12 meters) tall, with a heat shield the size
of a tennis court.

"It's really thrilling ? it makes it so tangible that
we can really do these things," Greene told SPACE.com.

Also on hand at the ceremonies was NASA's deputy
administrator Lori Garver, who said she hoped James Webb's appearance in New
York might help to build its image as a future space observatory.

"Everyone's very excited for this telescope to
launch," Garver told SPACE.com. "I think we have every hope that as
the Webb telescope gets ready to launch, people understand this really is that
next generation. It's a real exciting time and a significant program for
NASA."

Visiting the Webb?

The students also got to meet a real-life astronaut, former
NASA spaceflyer John Grunsfeld, who visited the Hubble Space Telescope during
three separate space shuttle missions. Grunsfeld now heads the Space Telescope
Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.

A big difference between Hubble and its successor, he said,
is that James
Webb is designed to travel much farther out in space, to a point about a
million miles away from Earth, which is about four times farther than the moon.

At that distance, it won't be feasible for astronauts to hop
into a spacecraft and visit if the telescope needs an upgrade.

"With the Hubble,
I always felt like if something goes wrong, it's OK, we'll just go fix
it," Grunsfeld said in an interview. "With the Webb Space Telescope,
if something goes wrong, that's really bad. What that means is that the
engineers and designers have to be that much more careful."

Still, NASA is researching novel means of space propulsion
for future manned missions, so it's not completely out of the question that
astronauts could one day travel to the Webb, though that's not the current
plan.

"We have, in NASA's history, done the amazing," Garver
said. "We never say never at NASA."

The telescope is a cooperative effort among 15 nations, with
primary contributions from NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian
Space Agency. Europe will aim to launch James Webb in mid-2014 on an Ariane 5
rocket from Kourou, French Guiana.

"It's a wonderful feeling now we're in sight of
launch," said John Mather, James Webb Space Telescope senior project
scientist. "We're actually building the parts."